Doom Wad Reviews : Switchroom 2 / Coffee Break

 I am doing doom wad reviews now. This is my first one and it is of the doom 2 wad switchroom 2.  I won't be doing these very often but when a wad being played on a youtube channel by someone interests me I will review it.

Switchroom 2 is a project to take the original doom 2 maps and remake them with different themes. So map01 would not be hitech but hellish or urban, map20 would not be urban but hellish or hi-tech, etc. A previous project called Switchroom did the same thing for the ultimate doom levels.

Early on switchroom 2 is very good.  The first 16 levels are quite nicely done. The levels take the original maps and change their theme and when they do it well, they do it well. No issues in maps 1-16 so far for me. Beyond that is where it gets worse however.

Map17, map20 and Map28 devolve into bullshit platforming, a gameplay "style" I loathe.  Bullshit platforming is when you make the player run across multiple small platforms over lava you can't easily escape in one fell swoop, aka you can't do it one platform at a time. Many times they are at different angles and heights so you have to strafe precisely to make it across.  To make things worse, the maps beyond map20 are inconsistent. Map24 and map26 are just plain bad.  Map24 has nothing in common with the map it's supposed to remake (doom 2 map04) and map26 is badly designed with tons of misaligned textures and badly designed animated walls. Overall this was is actually kind of average, being only decent.

The second wad I will review, blows this one out of the water. Coffee Break is an 11 map wad by Matt Tropiano.  It's excellently designed.  I've personally played this one unlike the previous one, and think 99% of the maps I played in the first 9 were amazing.  Map03 is a personal favorite of mine, so is map08 and map09. Level design wise it is ridiculous with an insane attention to detail included.  Overall. this one is really really good.  The map has no issues for me, no bullshit platforming, no insanely hard puzzles, nothing like that, it's just plain fun.